Typical Pakistani response. It can be summed up such:

“It’s all India’s fault.”

Or if you want to quote Shaggy:

“It wasn’t me!”

Is there anything Pakistanis will actually take responsibility for? They’ve mistreated minorities well beyond anything in India (how easily they forget that little business of genocide against the minorities of East Pakistan) and mistreat their own Kashmiris, but they’ll go on and on to no end about Indian Kashmir. They’ll mismanage their water stocks and then blame India for not giving them enough. They’ll take tons of foreign aid from the West but then complain when the West insists that this money goes towards humanitarian efforts and to combat terrorism as opposed to fueling the sub-continental arms race.

This is Pakistan. It’s the national equivalent of a trouble-making welfare bum. It’s the equivalent of that neighbour on the dole who does nothing, collects a government cheque, then whines and complains about the help you do provide and ever so often tries to rob his hard-working older sibling next door.

Yet, Obama is focused on Afghanistan. If he wants to fix Afghanistan, he’s gotta start with Pakistan. When Pakistani society creates individuals like Faizal Shahzad, who despite being in the US for 10 years, got radicalized, you know that something is very rotten in Islamabad.

Prof. Nikos, firstly, Obama was handed a pile of mess on his first day on the job, namely 2 wars and a crumbling economy. In all fairness, I think Obama has handled the perpetual catch-22′s that he has been given, pretty darn well. His options are very limited and his margins to operate are very narrow. All of this quagmire is the doing of the Bush Era, poor Obama has find a way to somehow start a clean slate with all of these perpetual wars and economic vampirism that has been tossed his way, first day into office. Obama has not really even begun to implement his own policies, his administration is so burdened trying to rectify the follies and social welfare for the rich, brought about by the last administration, who started those wars to make the rich richer and make the banks richer. Not Obama’s fault. Point the finger back at the predecessors.

@Surinder Puri,

True, the water shortages are the doing of the those who ran Pakistan. While they were busy making weapons, nukes and training terrorists to use in Afghanistan using IMF and beggar bowl money, they did not care for their average citizen who needs a job, an education, standard of life, let alone the bare necessities of life, like food and water. The PA and their puppet politicians shamefully and selfishly squandered the futures of their fellow Pakistani’s to keep their grip on power, using India as a fictitious enemy.

Using India, Israel and America as an enemy is not going to quench the thirst and fill the bellies of 170 million Pakistani’s.

One wonders if sense will ever come to Pakistani’s once they are thirsty and hungry and look for all the answers to all of their problems within their own borders. The answers and those who are the cause of ruin in their lives are right under their noses, on T.V. and Radio every day.

Now Karzai is in Washington to do some explaining. But he didn’t come here as a head of state, but as a U.S. viceroy in Afghanistan. Obama was not waiting at the airport to greet him, there was no red carpet, and news reports float that he is in Washington to be reprimanded and apologize for talking freely about Afghan war issues before clearing his speeches with the State Department. Karzai, therefore, is nothing more than what Fellipe Petain of the Vichy Regime was to Germany in France in 1940-1944. A puppet of an foreign occupying force on a visit here to take his orders from Obama, and then go back to implement them – or lose his job, which is protected and funded by the U.S.

But in Afghanistan, Karzai’s “reconciliation” with the Taliban is faltering because the U.S. opposes his
sharing of control with the Taliban, who, in turn, insist the U.S. “must get out!” The U.S. prefers “re-integration, which means “surrender of the Taliban”, and then a systematic clean up of anti-U.S. elements in Afghanistan to prevent a relapse. That is what the Soviet Union did with the installation to power of Babrak Karmal in 1979, whose secret police under Mohammad Najinullah wiped out all anti-Soviet elements – including Hafizulla Amin, a high ranking communist competitor of Karmal. Najibulla became president with Soviet support, but his regime didn’t last, and the Taliban hang him publicly in kabul.

Would the Taliban fall into “re-integration” with Karzai’s U.S. controlled regime, and submit to the same fate with those that cooperated with Karma’s regime? Only naive people would believe that, but Washington has many in the U.S. government bureaucracy. I predict, that when the war in Afghanistan is over,
there will be no Babrak Karmal-like pro-U.S. regime in Kabul. The Greek historian Herodotus once had a prophecy: “No foreign occupying power can retain control of a country forever against a hostile occupied population.” That is what is happening in Afghanistan today, but Obama is terrified that unless he finds a face-saving way out of Afghanistan’s war swamp, he may have to wave “adios” to his 2012 reelection bid.
And of course that means thousands more of war dead, and more massive destruction in Afghanistan, just to
secure his re-election. The adage “power corrupts” is the only reason the bloody war in Afghanistan is still
going on. Nikos Retsos, retired professor